Volume 2 Number 1,
July 2017

The trans-religious role of ritual power enforced by the king’s priest or purohita in Kāmbujadeśa elicits new queries. The importance accorded to him in inscriptions, entails a comparative investigation into the office of the priest in India. The paper attempts to understand the forces that led to the rise of his status in Kāmbujadeśa in the context of Tāntric Śaivism and the devarāja cult. A comparison of the office in India and Kāmbujadeśa can offer new insights into his religio-political role that has intrigued scholars. The paper hopes to spark a new discussion and contribute to a relevant debate in the field of historical and religious studies.

The primordial Liṅga is prehistoric in its global and proto-historic in the Indian religious setting. As prehistoric artifacts, these seem to have commanded their own symbolism. It was identified with Śiva and was the symbol of worship in Hindu temples all over South and Southeast Asia, maybe c. 500 BCE. Certain question hovering round the worship of the Liṅga such as why it is covered with a cloth and the regional variations of the theme in Tamil literary tradition are examined. However, the main focus is on the unreported bronzes in the Brahmapurīśvara temple at Perunakar (district Kāñcīpuram). These bronzes are related to the cult of the Liṅga; e.g. the bronze of Candraśekhara and the Liṅga juxtaposed. A unique collection of Nāyaṉmār bronzes are brought to light and most of these saints were dedicated to Liṅga worship. The vocabulary obtained from early Tamil literature helps to fix the Liṅga cult within the Hindu religious tradition. The bronzes were appealing to the society and served the needs of temples when gala festivals were celebrated. Besides, they served procession, Tamil ulā within the temple or village during nityapūjās and mahotsavas.

This essay explores the points of contact between the eminent Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye (1912–1991) and Patanjali’s Yoga-Sutras. Early in his academic career Frye wrote a ground-breaking study of William Blake, Fearful Symmetry, but his international reputation was based largely upon his comprehensive study of literary conventions, Anatomy of Criticism (1957). Twenty years after its publication the Anatomy was the most frequently cited book in the arts and humanities by a writer born in the twentieth-century. During the 1970s he wrote a definitive study of romance, The Stubborn Structure, followed by a study of the social context of literature, The Critical Path. Toward the end of his life he published two books on the Bible, The Great Code and Words with Power. The basis of all this writing was a firm and expansive grounding in the Western literary tradition. But with the publication of the 30-volume Collected Works of Frye (1996–2012), which includes his previously unpublished papers (notebooks, diaries, student papers, typescripts of talks), we have begun to see that while Frye was firmly rooted in Western liberal humanism in its Classical and Christian forms, he is more interested in Eastern thought than is commonly imagined. Thus, he was able not simply to engage in worlds outside of what he called his “cultural envelope” but to assimilate Eastern religious principles into his own world view. Eastern influences on his thinking include the Lankavatara and Avatamsaka Sutras, Zen Buddhism, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Taoism (Tao-te Ching and Chuang-tzu), Confucianism (I Ching), and Patanjali’s yoga. The present paper is an exploration of the relationship between Frye and Patanjali. It seeks to answer the question, what did Frye learn from Patinjali’s Yoga-Sutras?

This paper deals with two topics: (1) ‘rebirth theories’ in Indian philosophy and (2) the problem of reconciling the ultimate nature of ‘prakṛti’ in Sāṅkhya-Yoga with the sole ultimate reality of ‘ātman/Brahman’ in the Upaniṣads. An attempt has been made to demonstrate the hermeneutical devices used to legitimise later understandings with older texts by various commentators. Relevant original texts in Sanskrit and commentarial literature on them have been used for this purpose.

This book is a detailed account of multi-dimensional perspectives about the goddess Sitala and will hold significance within the arena of religious studies as it is a first of its kind. Other journal publications and books that marginally focus on this goddess tend to be more evasive and ambiguous in their approach to describing the purport for resonating with this particular mother. Ferrari’s writings of the goddess Sitala encompasses information from a variety of sources which include narratives, Indian Literature, sacred Hindu texts as well as perceptions from those that engage in healing practices which offer the reader concrete and verified information as to why and for what purpose this particular Goddess has been worshipped.